30. Swashbuckled Returns
In which Glossy explains the queue...
@Swashbuckled came through the door of the Bluestocking still in sailing rig. There was salt on her boots, salt in her plait, and a white tide line of it across the strap of the camera slung at her hip. She did not stop at the bar. She crossed the room to the darkroom door, knocked, and when Glossy opened it, stood holding out the camera and two rolls of film without a word of greeting to anyone.
Glossy took the camera and the film, turned each roll over, and looked at Swashbuckled.
“Cumbrae,” said Swashbuckled.
Glossy carried the rolls to the shelf inside the darkroom door, where a line of numbered canisters already stood waiting. There were a lot of them. She wrote a number on each of the new arrivals and set them at the far end of the line.
“Those are Liverpool,” she said, indicating the rest of the shelf. “In order of arrival. No exceptions.” She said it the way she would have said the opening hours and closed the door.
Swashbuckled sat down at the big table and took off one boot.
Gasket brought the teapot, and the tea went round, and somewhere in the middle of it Swashbuckled said, “Found a mark on Cumbrae.”
“A MARK?” said Gantry, at full volume. “GANGPLANK’S MESSAGE SAID NOTHING ABOUT A MARK. She swam it here. Round rocks. We made her say it eight times. Two windows, both photographed. That was all of it.”
“Obviously,” said Swashbuckled, “I sent Gangplank ahead for a reason.” She picked up her tea. “There are two types of people in this world. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete information.”
She stopped there.
The room waited for the second half which did not come. Swashbuckled drank her tea. Gangplank, at the end of the table, looked at Gantry, and Gantry looked at the room, and Gasket poured.
@AngleofRepose opened her notebook to the page ruled into columns and found the line that read Cumbrae. Two windows, with nothing after it. She sat with her pencil ready. “Report,” she said.
“Cathedral of the Isles,” said Swashbuckled. “Millport. Smallest cathedral in Britain. You could rig it as a foredeck. Two windows in the ante-room to the Lady Chapel, Gabriel and Michael, by Margaret Chilton. Good glass. We photographed both.”
“The Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland,” said Grisaille, from something written down, “states that the Isle of Cumbrae possesses no buildings of note.”
“Thank you, Grisaille,” said @Hedgehogforshort.
“Is Gabriel a gerbil?” asked Garnet.
The table considered this.
“Gabriel begins with a G!” said Garnet, in support of the question. The gerbils nodded.
“Gabriel is an archangel,” said Swashbuckled.
Garnet thought about it. “Could be both,” she said, and nobody corrected her either.
“The mark,” prompted Angle.
“In the leading,” said Swashbuckled. “Under Gabriel. Bottom left of the window, in the border came on the outside face. A circle. Three lines through it. Struck in, not scratched. I put the lens against the glass of the porch door first to check the light, then photographed the mark from a chair, which the verger fetched, and which I returned.”
“Struck, not scratched,” said Angle, writing. “Under Gabriel. Did you check under Michael?”
“Checked every centimetre of both. Michael’s leading is clean.”
“That’s the Margrave’s mark,” said Angle. “The circle and the three lines. Same as Glasgow, under Eve. Same as everywhere.” She wrote The Margrave’s Mark, under Gabriel, in the blank after Cumbrae. Two windows, and the line that had stood empty since Sunday was full.
“Was there anything under it?” asked Hedgehog. “Underneath? The way there was at Norwich.”
“I report what I saw,” said Swashbuckled. “I saw a circle and three lines. What’s under a thing is a matter for whoever examines the photographs. Once the film has been developed.”
Everyone looked at the darkroom door, which stayed shut, and behind which Glossy was working through film in order of arrival, Liverpool first, no exceptions.
The tea went round again. Swashbuckled took off the other boot and gave an account of the sail back, which took four sentences and included a squall off Portpatrick that anyone else would have made a chapter of.
@ChristmasStars heard the post van and stood up. She went out to collect the delivery and came back with a single fat envelope, brown paper, tied round with string, addressed in a looping hand, with a hard cylindrical weight in one corner that could only be a film canister.
“It’s from @FuzzyPuffling,” she said. “This must be her letter and the film from Truro.”
Glossy’s door opened before anyone knocked on it. She took the envelope, cut the string, slid the canister out into her paw, and wrote a number on it.
“End of the queue,” she said, giving the letter back to Christmas Stars and closed the door.
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